Premiere: E.G. Phillips configures dazzling & ornate new video, ‘The Albatross Song’

Author and self-prescribed bird-man Noah Stryker examines the life and culture of birds, from various species like fairy-wrens and pigeons to starlings, and correlates behaviors to humanity with his book, The Thing with Feathers. “The more that humans study birds and discover more about their behaviors, the more similarities we find between ourselves and our feathered friends,” he writes in the Introduction, setting up his own assessments. Thus, he opens up not only parallels but a new dimension altogether to human thought and comprehension of the world. Wily and bewitching, curious San Francisco indie-folk singer-songwriter E.G. Phillips plots out his own interpretation with a song and visual that’s maniacally-enchanting, merrily prancing along the avenues of “loneliness and uncertainty,” writes Phillips to B-Sides & Badlands over email. “[The song] can exist in a much mellower space, but Ben’s production captures the madcap energy of the song at its most raucous that to be honest at times is a bit of a lifesaver. It’s hard not to perform ‘The Albatross Song’ and not feel pumped up afterward.”

“The Albatross Song,” produced by Ben Osheroff, leans into outlandish storytelling, an almost Carnivàle shimmer smothered over the mix and finger-picking style. Horns flush and swell over a drum kit’s steady pitter-patter, and Phillips’ voice takes on a rustic, ring-leader quality. Drawing his “avian menagerie of the first verse” directly from Stryker’s 2014 work, from which he also imprinted bits of poetry into the second verse, the song initially took root “one Thanksgiving that I was spending by myself in San Francisco,” says Phillips. “I was playing around with the chords to an old cowboy song and clearly had birds on the brain, though perhaps not the one you might imagine under the circumstances. Being about an albatross, some references to ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ [written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge] felt obligatory — though I maintain that I’m trying to rehabilitate the bird’s image, much maligned by said poem.”

“Don’t you know you can’t get lost / ‘Cause you’re never truly lost / When you’re at home, at sea,” he caw-caws, outlining what would become the album’s title. The visual restlessly swirls between reality and fantasy, a thorny and psychedelic mind trip that mercilessly swallows the senses. “The song is a favorite during live performances — people get into the sing-along portion, almost to the point where I can’t stop them. Given how people were responding, it seemed like a no-brainer that this was going to be a major part of the next album,” he explains.

Secret Garden, an arts and performance space in the Tenderloin, supplies a certain deathly magic, a backdrop that injects the song with even more fanciful spirit and grandeur. “Such is its visually sumptuous nature, I was sold on it as the location from the get-go, but the wave sculpture cinched the deal, given the album artwork I’d painted. Rain, both frustrating and serendipitous, kept the shooting indoors,” he says of the video, which also spotlights face-painter Rachel Deboer and violinist Twinly. Director Anthony Jimenez allows the location to live and breathe, a canvass that would only intensify Phillips’ already-stimulating lyrics.

Phillips is set to perform a release show at The Lost Church of San Francisco on July 17.

His new album At Home At Sea officially drops this Friday (July 12).

Watch below:

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